NEW SCARE CITY

It's a fictional streetscape we wander, here, a metropolis whose buildings, boulevards, and back alleys are in a constant state of flux. This is every place, and yet, no place at all - a city of dreams and a dream of a city.

Here, we explore the life and work of Ivan Illich and his circle of collaborators. There's no comprehensive index to the articles published, but we invite you to use the Search box, to the left, and to explore the Archive links that appear at the bottom of each page. Comments are welcomed.

Sunday, May 05, 2013

Interview with Illich, 1972, on video

In 1972, left-wing, Catholic writer and intellectual Jean Marie Domenach (1922-1997) spent several hours talking with Ivan Illich. At the time, Domenach was editor in chief of Esprit, a French literary and political journal that published Illich in the early 1970s and again in 2010. Their encounter, or at least, parts of it, was filmed for broadcast on French television and resulted in a 51-minute program.

We've just discovered that a French audio-visual archive -- L'Institute National de l'Audiovisuel (INA), which claims to be "the world's largest digital archive," holding, among other items, 3.5 million hours of radio and TV recordings -- is selling digitized copies of the program (in MP4/.avi format), for 3 Euros. The site offers a 5-minute preview at no charge. In it, or so we gather from a once-through interpreted with our miserable French, Illich explicates for Domenach the symbology of a classical-style garden statue that shows a woman -- the Virgin Mary? -- holding a spherical vessel of some kind. Much astronomical talk ensues.

UPDATE: A reader has kindly informed us that this video is viewable elsewhere on the Web, in its entirety, at no charge, right here.

We look forward to watching the full program, which touches on Illich's career, his reluctance to talk about religion, the founding of CIDOC, education and de-schooling, and more. The men address each other as friends.

"Quel est ton projet?" Domenach asks. What's your project?

Illich pauses for five long seconds, his face twitching slightly as if he is unsure what to say. And then, he raises his eyes to look at the camera (the two men are conversing on a garden bench, the cameraman standing) directly in the eye -- perhaps to address his future viewers or perhaps to make it clear he is aware of (and annoyed by?) the camera's presence and role as eavesdropper. He looks back at Domenach and says quietly, "I don't know."